On the Eurostar
by anne-benedicte
Summary: On her way to Serena's new home, Bernie reminisce about the past... Please review and tell me if you want more ! the story goes on in 'In France", "Meanwhile in Provence" and "Back in England"
1. Chapter 1

Bernie rested her head on her seat, heaving a weary sigh. She had splurged on a first –class ticket, and obviously, she had travelled in much worse conditions, but the Eurostar was not the Orient-Express… She suddenly felt like all the strain of the previous months was bearing on her shoulders. Compared to army life, it should have been a breeze, but her time at Holby had been such an emotional roller coaster ride that she felt drained, and she was still reeling from the last blow, the closure of her unit. Parting from her colleagues, she reflected, had been the worst. She should have been used to it – her whole life had been made of partings. Why was this one so hard ?

Her father had been in the army too, like her grand-father – not medics, but "real" soldiers. Indeed, her father had thought she was opting for a soft choice when she decided to become a doctor. He had died a few years before she got sent to Afghanistan, and she would always regret he'd never known his daughter had seen the reality of war. He would probably have been very derisive about her accident though – would have told her she ought to have known there would be IEDs about – like when she was a kid, and she'd got bullied at school. Two girls had pushed her about, and she had tripped and broken her wrist. Her father had been on ops, and when he'd got home a few days later, his only comment had been: "Well, you should have stood up for yourself. You brought this on yourself." The fact that she had been a slight and shy little girl, and her bullies big hefty older girls had not figured in his equation at all… She sighed again. So many trains, boats, planes, always leaving people behind, never making real friends, never bothering to, really, because every army brat knew not to get too attached. This was before the internet, and kids in those days were not really into letter-writing.

They had moved from army base to army base, Canada, Gibraltar, Scotland, Germany … Her mother was quite gregarious, and made friends easily with other army wives, but Berenice found it difficult to make contact with the other children. She could usually be found her nose in a book, or talking with her mother's friends. Especially after THE day. Bernie shook her head slightly, as if trying not to remember – this was not the time, not after everything that had happened at Holby …But the memory, imprinted in her brain, did not want to be forgotten, and cropped up at the most unwelcome moments. She was back in their kitchen in Rheindahlen, ten years old again, wearing an apron and helping her mother to make a cake. They were laughing together as her mother was showing her how to peel and core an apple – she'd never been able to eat an apple since …One minute her mother was standing, laughing, teasing her with the apple peel, and the next, she was on the floor, clutching her arm, murmuring nonsensical words, then unconscious. Berenice had stood uncomprehendingly for what had felt like ages, but would really have been a minute or two, before running out of the flat and knocking on their neighbour's door. The lady next door had called the medical team, but it was too late – a lightning heart attack, they'd said. No warning signs, no possible resuscitation.

When her father got back from maneuvers, the day after, he found his daughter plunged into a mutism that lasted for several months. She had retreated into a shell which no one had ever been able to break completely. Not even her husband Marcus. Especially not her husband, in fact. She still had days of utter darkness when she felt unable to do anything other than stay curled up in the dark, and Marcus had never been able to understand. Those dark dog days never happened when she was at work or on the field – this was one of the reason why she drove herself so hard – keeping busy kept her from darkness. On those days, Charlotte and Cameron had learnt not to bother her, but Marcus had always tried to get her to "snap out of it" – wrong …Wrong choice, wrong path, wrong life. She'd always felt responsible for her mother's death, and her father had not really disabused her. In fact, she had always thought he blamed her – as if her ten-years-old self should have done more, done better. When her kids had been younger, each time she was sent out, she would pray to be safe – she did not believe in God, not really, but there must be someone, somewhere, who pulled the strings. She did not really care about herself – death was only an occupational hazard after all – but she did not want Charlotte and Cameron to hear of their mother's death. And yet she went, and she endangered her life, day after day, in order to save others.

THAT day would not let go – this was the trouble with train travelling – you were a prisoner in your seat, not in control, just left to yourself with too much time on your hands. Her Ipod, Kindle, and the magazines she had bought from the station were not enough to block the flow of memories. There had been no one to comfort little Berenice then. Her mother's friends had been kind enough, but they had had their own kids to look after, and as she had shied away from human contact, nobody had dared cuddle her. Her father, when he'd come, had patted her awkwardly on the shoulder at the funeral, but there had been no one to break the shell she had erected around her. From this time had come her brisk manner, and her fear of human contact. This might be why she was such a great surgeon – she could detach herself from the person, and see only a broken body to be mended. But it did not make for easy relationships. Anyways, it was better to remain aloof, to be seen as "bossy Major Wolfe" than to reveal her extremely sensitive and fragile nature. Her made-up persona had served her well over the years, and only Alex had begun to crack her disguise.

(to be continued)


	2. Chapter 2

The coffee cart interrupted Bernie's train of thoughts : "A double expresso, please" . As she tasted the boiling coffee, she made a face – not worse than the brew they got in Holby's cafeteria, but not much better. Worse, the coffee tasted like …like Serena, like those first stolen moments among long work hours when she had begun at Holby. It was worse, because she was going to join her in the small house Serena had rented at the foot of Mount St Victoire, and she wondered if she was making another mistake. They had kept in contact during Serena's absence, but neither of them was very good on the phone, and Bernie had had no time to write long emails. And so she felt as if once again, she was going into the unknown, and of her own volition this time too…

During all her childhood and adolescence, she had felt like a pawn being moved against her will, and now she had all the power of decision, she was afraid of making the wrong choice. She did not even know what choices had been right or wrong anymore. Obviously, she had not chosen to be airlifted to Holby after her accident, but going back to Marcus and staying there had definitely not been the right option. If she had gone back to Afghanistan, would she and Alex still be together ? But then, what about Serena ? She did love her, as much as she felt she could love, rely on, and trust another person.

After her mother's death, she been sent off to boarding school in England – her mother had been an only child, and her father's brothers were either confirmed bachelors with no place for a child in their lives, or working at the end of the world. So it had been St Bride's for her, just a month after …She had flown as an unaccompanied minor to London, where she had been met by one of the school's mistresses. After a quick stop in Harrods', where she had been fitted with the necessary uniform, she had been taken to the place where she would spend the worst years in her life. As a shy mute newcomer of ten, she had been fair game for the school mischievous trouble-makers. Most of the girls were not particularly horrid to her, although some of them had rather nasty streaks. And yet, during the seven years she had spent at the school, she had never cried – she wouldn't give them the satisfaction. To keep the tears at bay, she only had to picture in her minds' eye her father's disapproving stare, and the tears got swallowed down. Even when she had been little, he had frowned when she cried, and she had learnt to "keep a stiff upper lip". Therefore, there were no tears, not when she had found her favorite book torn to shreds, nor when she had been scolded for not doing her maths homework when it had disappeared from her desk, nor even when she found her bed repeatedly soaked at night.

Actually, "never" was a slight exaggeration – just once, she had allowed herself to break down. A few months before her death, her mother had taken her to visit a nearby zoo, and in the souvenir shop, Berenice had fallen in love with a teddy bear. It was just a little nondescript brownish teddy bear, with a forlorn expression in his button eyes. They had both known she was too old for teddy bears, but her mother had understood, and the bear had been with her ever since. She had very carefully hidden it in her dormitory, or so she'd thought. The day she'd found it stabbed, with shreds of kapok pouring out of its belly, and a cross drawn on it with black marker, she had skipped class, and had gone into hiding in the basement, crying her heart out. And then, she had sworn to herself that when she got out of that school, she would never ever be bullied or tolerate bullying again. And that memory sent a jolt of apprehension into her heart. Because what Serena had done to Jasmine Burrows had definitely amounted to bullying. Of course, she had had excuses – grief was certainly enough to turn anyone's mind upside down, but… If Bernie was honest with herself, she was madder at herself than at Serena – she should have done more to defend Jasmine. And if she had …well, if she had, she might not have been on her way to Serena's right now, but maybe, just maybe, she could have saved Jasmine's life. She knew it had been a freak accident, but … The fact was that Jasmine had reminded her of herself in her boarding school days, and she should have helped her against Serena's irrational behavior. Berenice had indeed been just like Jasmine in her days at St Bride's. She did not want to make trouble, did not want to draw attention to herself in case it made things worse.

After the first year, the bullying had more or less stopped – it was no fun anymore for the bullies, as she did not react to the provocations. By then, she had built for herself a strong shield in the form of an invisibility cloak. She had learnt to disappear into silence, to surround herself with such strong emotional walls that nothing mattered anymore. She was a gifted student – brilliant, even, in the subjects she enjoyed, but she never took part in any class discussions, never answered and questions aloud – some teachers even complained they did not know the sound of her voice. She got good marks, mostly because she would not tolerate anything else for herself – her own standards were even more exacting than her father's – and she knew that he was only interested in her results. Indeed, in their correspondence, it was the only thing that ever figured. He did not ask if she was well, or happy, or if she had made friends, but he sometimes congratulated her for full marks in mathematics or chemistry.

When she left school, she knew she never wanted to be in an all-female environment ever again. She had made no real friends during her school days – there had been one or two hangers-on who mostly wanted help for their homework, but real friendships had been effectively stopped by her shield. There had been one or two teachers who had wanted to draw her out, but she had done her best to discourage them – it would have been much too dangerous to get too attached. Medical school, and then the army, had felt like the best option to avoid the petty, gossipy, smug atmosphere she had lived in for seven years.

In medical school, she had reinvented herself – no more Miss Invisible, no more Berenice in fact – she had become Bernie, still an aloof character, but a hard one, and who gave as good as she got. She had developed an incisive sense of humor and a talent for repartee. She still had no real friends, but she got along with most of the other students, except those who got jealous of her skills. She could not have settled for general practice, like many of the minority of women in her courses – she wanted more – she wanted to prove she was tough – surgery was the Graal of the medical field, so she had to choose that path. Even that was not hard enough – it had to be the army.

The Eurostar was arriving at Gare du Nord. Bernie managed to extricate her bag from the suitcase rack before most of the other passengers, and got out as fast as she could. She hated waiting, hated crowds…She was in luck, the queue for the taxis was not too long, and she got one in a few minutes. She had no wish to linger in Paris, but she had to go from station to station in order to catch another train to Aix-en Provence. The driver tried to engage her in conversation, but, getting no real answers besides "oui" and "non", he gave up and cranked up the volume of the radio. "He probably thinks I'm another of those bloody English people who believe everyone should speak their language and who don't understand a word of French, let alone speak it", said Bernie to herself, amused. Actually, she had a fairly good command of the language, as it was one of the subjects she had studied for her A-Levels. Her silence was not due to her ignorance, but to more painful memories coming to the surface.

Marcus had taken her to Paris for their honeymoon. They had spent four days in a hotel near St Germain des Prés, eating, drinking, and disagreeing with each other, although very civilly.

(to be continued)


End file.
